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Obamacare will destroy your private health insurance

Why would [the "public option"] drive private insurers out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they're offering a good deal, then why is it that the government -- which they say can't run anything -- suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That's not logical.

Oh, it's logical. The so-called "public option" sounds nice at first, but it's actually a sneaky scheme to engineer a total government takeover of your health care.

You have to remember that the government isn't a fair competitor. It doesn't have to play by the same rules as your employer. It doesn't have to make a profit, keep its employees happy, or provide excellent service to its "customers." It will take you as a "customer" even if you can't pay, because it can just absorb the loss and print more money. Private companies can't compete against the entity that makes and enforces the rules ... especially when that entity is run by statists progressives who have decided to eliminate those private companies. The game is rigged from the start.

When it comes to covering expenses for employee pay and benefits, your employer has two choices on how much to pay:

Gee, I wonder which one your boss will pick?

Unless your boss is nuts, he'll stop paying for your health insurance. What if your boss actually is nuts, and decides to keep paying for your private health plan? Your employer's competitors will cut their expenses by dumping their health coverage, and their cost savings will mean they'll run your employer out of business ... and you'll lose your job. It's a variation on the Tragedy of the Commons.

Although it's bad enough to face a choice between eventually losing your private health care or losing your job, Congress is about to kick things into high gear. They're getting ready to tax your private health insurance. It won't be long until the so-called "public option" will be your only option.

The statists progressives have been working toward that goal all along, and last year during the presidential campaign a few were honest enough to admit it.

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Pretty good display of impoverished, prejudicially biased thinking. I cannot hope to address all of your false and illogical attacks on a Health Care Act that neither of us knows or understands in its entirety. However, your arguments are flawed right out of the gate.

YOU: You have to remember that the government isn't a fair competitor.
ME: Are you suggesting that private businesses always strive to be fair competitors, or that government (run by citizens much like the private business owners, and in fact, sometimes the same business owners) never strives to be fair? Do you see the false and unsupported bias in your opening assumptions?

YOU: It doesn't have to play by the same rules as your employer.
ME: Some of the rules may differ, but by and large there are many common rules that prevail in a civilized and constitutionally established government, which respects and honors the need for private enterprise. Despite any less than perfect specific characteristics, we live in such a society with such a government. If you want to talk about rules, maybe you should go a little deeper with our analysis. Or a lot deeper actually, instead of jumping to conclusions that you cannot support.

YOU: It doesn't have to make a profit.
ME: Actually, in one sense, it does have to make a profit. It has to provide a living arrangement for its voting citizens which is economically viable, and which receives the support of the majority of its voting citizens. It has to be viably operative so as to seek to attain and maintain the well-being of its citizens, and of society at large. Sure, it is not perfect, but no private businesses are perfect either. They have waste; they have corruption; they have inefficiencies. They also have poor management, especially when they are penny-wise and pound-foolish, such as undermining the governmental systems which enable them to conduct their business in the first place with more freedom and safety. If you let all the businesses and all the workers keep all of their earnings, our society would quickly devolve into a shambles. Average life expectancy would quickly decrease. Violent crime and rampant brutality would prevail. That is just a very short list of negative consequences. Good government enables businesses to make a profit, and do so with a long-term perspective towards lifting up all members of our society. Good government enables us all to be better human beings. That we have some present problems with balancing our priorities and our budgets can be attributed to poor thinking such as that which you espouse so proudly and mindlessly.

YOU: It doesn't have to keep its employees happy.
ME: Government not only has to keep its employees happy, it has to try to keep its citizens happy -- even the super-wealthy fat-cats who mistakenly believe that the world should revolve around their maximization of profit over any other considerations, even over the well-being of their fellow citizens. Ever try to make a greedy, shallow, fat-cat happy. It's an oxymoronic proposition. If someone is super-wealthy and still not happy, what is their problem? Not a lack of excess money, because excess money is not the root of happiness, or a necessary condition. A human can be happy on a subsistence existence. Many of the super-wealthy are like-minded, and they want to do more to help others attain a better existence. They don't sit around whining and bemoaning their obligation to contribute to the society that enables them to achieve and exist at their high income levels. They welcome the opportunity to contribute. That attitude is part of what makes them happy.

YOU: It doesn't have to provide excellent service to its "customers."
ME: Doesn't it? Certainly not all businesses feel the need to provide excellent service to their customers. You can say that the "market" will weed out the bad businesses. Well, that may be true in the long, long run, but sometimes only if the government, via its functions and policies, acts to encourage and require standards of service. Government, that is to say the politicians who get elected, must be especially mindful of providing excellent services or its office holders get voted out of office. Government is actually a part of the "market", and it is naive and foolish to talk about "private" versus "public" enterprise, as if they are entirely separate entities. Such a simplistic conceptualization defies the realities of our social contractual interrelationships.

YOU: It will take you as a "customer" even if you can't pay, because it can just absorb the loss and print more money.
ME: Really? Is it that simple? Then, why don't we all just sit back and let the government print more money for us to live on? We could employ the entire populace in the money-making business. Your argument is incredibly weak and sarcastically lame. If that is the depth of your economic analysis, I recommend that you go back to school and learn some higher economics including some advanced mathematics to allow you to attempt a REAL economic analysis, not just a pollyanna-ish overly-simplistic rhetorical bombast that has little or no logical or useful basis for its preconclusions without any serious analysis.

YOU: Private companies can't compete against the entity that makes and enforces the rules ... especially when that entity is run by statists progressives who have decided to eliminate those private companies. The game is rigged from the start.
ME: Wow, I am so impressed with your lack of any social or economic responsibility. What little cocoon have you been living in? These two sentences say a lot of nothing worthwhile. "Statists" progressives running the government and trying to eliminate private companies? Your rhetorical abuse of language, and your facile abuse of ameliorative complex entities of civilization, is mildly entertaining, but lacking any substantive content. Their are so many examples and so much data that soundly refute your sophomoric opinion, that I hardly know where to begin. First of all, do you know of any health insurance company that has gone out of business, or even a single one that has not reaped huge profits and a reasonable rate-of-return or better? Do you know any doctors or health-care workers that are being mercilessly exploited by working at a sub-minimum wage? There are, I bet, many thousands of volunteer workers in health-care who earn nothing, and they don't complain as much as you do. How many hospitals are going broke? Private hospitals! There are some who have inappropriately invested in facilities or equipment that may have incurred losses. But overall the health-care industry, and the insurance companies, and the workers, are all making a nice profit. The industry is growing. Not enough success for you? And they are actually contributing something worthwhile, not only for themselves, or their shareholders, or their owners, but something worthwhile to our nation called "quality of life".

The rest of your diatribe is even less cogent. You may be somewhat adroit at rhetorical attacks, but you really don't have the intelligence or knowledge to offer any meaningful opinions on such complicated topics as government or economics. Your obvious bias against Pres. Obama is pathetic. Pres. Obama may not have done everything to your liking, but your criticisms of him, and of his policies, is dishonest and disgraceful. He is the most intelligent, most humble, most caring, hardest working politician we have seen anywhere in this world for decades, and maybe for all of human history. Has he made some errors of judgment, or is he perfection incarnate? One of his biggest errors in judgment has been his hope that Republican congressional members would make at least some pretense at reasonable and intelligent exercise of legislative action. Worse, they have consistently shown a near complete lack of any integrity, and have been flagrantly dishonest liars and frauds. They talk one game, and do just the opposite. On a whim. You are decidedly one of them. A shill and a mouthpiece for avarice and deceit. Freedom of speech should not be abused so cavalierly, my fellow citizen, as you do on your site. Nonetheless, I thank you for providing a forum for discussing these very important matters, and I encourage you to continue to examine your opinions for any excesses of false logic and flawed reasoning. You have a lot of room for improvement.

If you really care about yourself and your country, you will discipline yourself to seek, hear and consider opinions that are diametrically opposed to your own, and maybe even become more human and more enlightened in the process. Good luck.